


self-assessment

by doomcountry



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Do Not Archive, Less-Than-Ethical Dynamics, M/M, Mention of Martin's Feelings for Jon, Oral Sex, Trans Male Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-07
Updated: 2020-02-07
Packaged: 2021-02-27 23:21:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,022
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22593979
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/doomcountry/pseuds/doomcountry
Summary: Please answer the following items to the best of your ability.
Relationships: Martin Blackwood/Peter Lukas
Comments: 13
Kudos: 111
Collections: The Magnus Archives Rare Pairs 2020





	self-assessment

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Adoxography](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Adoxography/gifts).



> or, martin defeats peter through the power of administrative paperwork.
> 
> i love these two, and i love the lonely. i hope you enjoy it!

Like clockwork, at noon every Wednesday, the ancient fax machine that sits behind Martin’s desk comes to life. The same thing every time: one single sheet of type, with a crisp Magnus Institute letterhead.

EMPLOYEE SELF-ASSESSMENT

From the Desk of Peter Lukas

Acting Head

The Magnus Institute, London

Please answer the following items to the best of your ability.

* * *

  1. Broadly, how functionally isolated are you in your current situation?



Jon comes back to work on a Friday. It’s the greatest gift he could possibly have given Martin. It gives him the weekend to figure out what needs to be done.

He leaves early—Peter won’t notice and wouldn’t care even if he did. He packs up his desk neatly, deliberately, looking down at every movement of his shaking hands. Pens and pencils upright in their cup. Computer angled just so. Notebooks stacked in order of size. He reminds himself to breathe deeply through his nose.

He hesitates, and then, from the mounting pile of identical faxes from Peter, he takes one, folds it in half, and slides it into his satchel.

He pulls his cardigan on over his shoulders, hoists his bag, and takes the long route out of the building, avoiding the Archives in a broad arc. He walks home, though it’s a hike. He wants time to think.

He showers for a long time, in the dark, leaning against the wall. When he gets out, he sits down at the table to unfold the Self-Assessment flat in front of him.

He hasn’t yet filled any of them out, even though Peter keeps sending them. Maybe Peter hopes the sound of the fax machine will break him, eventually. Force him into compliance. Before now Martin has been so low and sad that he hasn’t had the energy to do much of anything, besides answer emails with clipped singular words and listen to the phone ring itself out. Jon in his coma, his mother in the ground. The Archives staff sequestered away from him. Forty-hour work week stretches of nothing, no answers, no comfort. Couldn’t be arsed to fill out a stupid form.

But things are different now. His situation has done a complete turn. Jon is back.

He thinks for a long time, looking down at the Self-Assessment. He knows the questions by heart, even though he hasn’t done anything about them. He drags an absent fingernail along the first one. _Broadly, how functionally isolated are you in your current situation?_

Peter has a plan for him. So he says. Not that he’s said anything about what it is, what it’s about, who it affects, why he needs Martin for it. When he appears, it’s usually to ask Martin for a run-down of the week, give him a handful of research documents, admonish him for spending too much time in the break room, and disappear again. By whatever metric Peter can measure him, he seems relatively pleased so far. What that means, Martin’s not sure. It’s about Loneliness. The Self-Assessment makes that obvious.

Yesterday, had he felt so inclined, he might have picked up a pen and filled out question number one. _Extremely,_ he might have said. Might have written whole paragraphs. He can imagine Peter, holding the one crisp sheet in his hands, smiling.

But Jon is back. Everything is on its head now. He has a moment in which to act.

He imagines it must be difficult to accurately gauge isolation from looks and actions alone. Hence the faxes. He sinks his chin into his hand. The typed words swim in front of his eyes, fading in and out of focus.

A good framework, maybe. An idea of what Peter is looking for in him, and how to tell him what he wants to hear.

He sits back in his chair, his heart slowing to a neutral, steady beat, an unfamiliar warmth prickling at the heels of his hands. He allows himself to breathe, just a little.

* * *

  1. At this point in time, do you consider yourself an isolated or lonely individual?



Peter, as usual, appears without warning. Martin has gotten used to the sound by this point, though, and doesn’t blink when his boss materializes in the armchair that sits across from his desk, ankle balanced on knee, hands folded over his belly as if he’s been relaxing there for hours. Who knows. Maybe he has.

“Peter,” Martin says, without looking up from his computer.

“Afternoon, Martin,” Peter says, genially. Always the sound of a smile in his voice.

“Help you with something?” Martin saves a spreadsheet and closes out of it, glances at the clock in the bottom-right corner of the screen. It’s a Tuesday. “I’m leaving for lunch.”

Peter looks at him for a little while, bopping his foot as if to some unheard tune. He tilts his head one way and then another. Martin, perhaps stubbornly, avoids his gaze.

“What does an assistant do, Martin?” Peter says, finally.

Martin snorts. “Is that a jab at my job performance?”

“Oh, not at all. As far as I know you’re doing wonderfully.” Peter opens his hands, watching Martin get up from his chair, tug down his shirt, reach for his bag. “It’s only that I’ve never run an Institute before. I’ve never had much experience with assistants, either.”

Martin looks at him for a moment, then sighs. He leans back down, opens his email. “There’s a payroll dispute that needs to be taken care of. Five meeting requests. I assume you’ll turn those down. Oh, and someone wants to talk to you about supply intake.”

Peter frowns. “All in-person issues, I imagine.”

“Hazards of the job,” Martin says, drily.

“You’ll take care of them, won’t you?”

“I thought the point was to keep me _away_ from people.”

“Over email, then.”

“Is that allowed?”

“I don’t see why not.” Peter smiles. “It’s my Institute, isn’t it?”

“Right.” Martin clears his throat, shoulders his bag. He is keenly aware of the clock in the corner of his screen, the numbers eating up into his lunch hour. Lunch is about the only time he gets to see other people—be around them at all. He doesn’t want to waste it. “Anything else?”

“Martin,” Peter says, with exaggerated distress. “Trying to get rid of me so soon?”

“Again, I thought the _point_ —”

“And here I thought I’d come and spend a bit of time with my favorite employee.”

Martin takes a beat. Looks at him. There’s a whisper of something besides the eternal cheerful smile on his face that, if he weren’t careful, he might mistake for genuine disappointment.

He sighs. Rolls his eyes. Relaxes his weight onto one hip. Peter’s smile widens.

“Are you hungry?” Martin says. “I was about to go get something.”

Peter’s white eyebrows rise. “I could eat,” he says, thoughtfully, almost to himself.

“Sandwiches alright?”

“Sandwiches. Wonderful.” Peter reaches into his peacoat pocket and pulls out his billfold, and Martin watches while he flips through it, plucks out a twenty pound note and holds it out between two fingers.

Martin stares at it. “Sandwiches,” he says again. “Not caviar.”

Peter shrugs. “Get yourself something sweet on the way back. Or keep the change. All the same to me.”

After a moment, Martin reaches over the desk and takes it. Peter seems satisfied. He leans back in the armchair, nods his head to the left, as if giving him permission to go.

Martin stifles a laugh of disbelief. Pockets the money. “I’ll be back.”

“Don’t dawdle,” Peter says, with only a small hint of warning. It weasels through the crack in the closing door and follows him a few paces, then disperses, like scent.

Martin blows out his lips when he’s in the hall, kneads at the bridge of his nose between two fingers, behind his specs.

He takes his usual circuitous route in avoidance of the Archives. It’s strange. Ever since Jon came back, and ever since Martin—in spite of all his best efforts to the contrary—has probably noticeably perked up, at least a little, Peter has been around more. Lingering more, talking to him more. He would have thought the opposite would be true. Instead, he seems to be actively enjoying coming in to bother Martin. _Spend time with his favorite employee?_ Whatever that’s about.

He had thought that Peter would notice the change in him, the extremely small three-point turn away from loneliness, and be disappointed. In a way—and this flabbergasts him, to think of it—he’s a little glad that he isn’t.

If there is going to be any issue in leading Peter on through the end of his game, it’s this: Martin, despite all sense, kind of likes him.

* * *

  1. Describe a relationship with a current or former coworker that you miss.



The easy answer, of course, would be Jon. It’s what Peter expects, he’s certain. So he writes it down on the white space below the item. _Jon,_ he writes. Considers lending a sorrowful wobble to his pen and then decides against it. It’s true, anyway. He’ll just exaggerate the degree to which it’s affecting him.

It’s going to be a balancing act. He has to give in just enough to keep Peter satisfied, and at the same time pull back just enough to keep himself from falling over the edge. But he thinks he can do it. He has a reason to, now.

Funny, being someone’s only leverage. The more he spends time with Peter, the more he talks with him and tries to see around his obtuse edges toward the person underneath, the more he pities him. Not hate, not even real dislike. Just pity. Pity that he’s being played and doesn’t know it yet. By Martin, and probably by Elias, too, at the end of the day. If his intentions are honest, he’s trying to do the same thing that Jon and the rest have been doing all this time, anyway. Pity, in that he picked the pawn for his suicide mission who has just recently gotten back on the train of _I want to live._

Peter has told him more than once that he doesn’t like confrontation. He seems to really enjoy conversation, though. The terms of Martin’s employment aren’t exactly HR-approved, and Peter asks him all kinds of things, and Martin doesn’t care enough to be shy. _Is he seeing anyone?_ No. _Would he like to?_ Not allowed, is he? _When was his last long-term relationship?_ Never had one. Sometimes he throws the questions back at Peter, to see if he’ll talk straight for once in his life. He never does. Hedges and _hm_ s and _well_ s. He seems genuinely interested when Martin talks, though. That’s kind of nice. He’s probably only collecting evidence for himself, one way or the other, as to whether or not Martin is on the right track. It hardly matters. It’s comforting to be listened to, even if it is only by his maddeningly cryptic boss.

Sometimes, standing behind Martin at his computer, where Martin is trying to explain for the sixth time the difference in quality between Google and Bing, Peter puts a hand on his shoulder, as if to steady himself. Or rests it on the back of his neck, at the warm place between his hair and his collar. That’s kind of nice, too. Martin won’t pretend otherwise.

He forms a solid picture of Peter in his head. Not just the obvious. A lonely man who is quite happy being lonely, but has to dip his toes back in the water of the wider world every now and then, to remember what it’s like to _not_ be. Conversationalist. Cheerful. Handsome. If he weren’t almost certainly evil, Martin thinks, they might get along. Might even have some kind of bond.

The longer he spends in Peter’s employ, the less the _evil_ part seems to matter, too.

Danger, danger.

* * *

  1. Describe an aspect of human connection that you no longer experience.



“Let’s talk about Jon,” says Peter.

Martin is working late. Peter has been idling around his office for a few hours now, remaining mostly just still enough to be ignored. He hasn’t said what he wants, if he wants anything. Maybe he’s here to try and soak up some of Martin’s loneliness, like a sunbather. Seems like the kind of thing he’d do. Martin can’t imagine any other reason he’d willingly spend more than ten minutes in another person’s presence.

“Why?” Martin says, carefully. He’s been painstakingly perusing a document sent over by some lawyer or other, taking notes, highlighting the PDF. His glasses have slid to the tip of his nose. It’s a pointless exercise, this lawsuit. Easily handwaved by the Institute’s liability waiver. But it’s something to do.

“I want to get a sense of how you’re feeling about him.” Peter wanders over, picks up a stress ball off Martin’s desk. It’s been squeezed half to death already. There’s not much left in it. He leans on the desk top, tossing the ball an inch or so into the air. “Being back and all.”

“He’s been back for weeks.”

“And?”

Martin glances at him. “And I’m happy he’s alive.”

“Well, I appreciate your honesty,” Peter says, “but you know that’s not what I want to hear.”

“Happy about it, but not as happy as I would have been six months ago,” Martin says, swiveling a little in his chair. “Better?”

Peter tilts his head thoughtfully. “We’ll work on it.”

“I’m not speaking to him,” Martin says. He watches the stress ball in Peter’s hands. “I never go down that way, unless I absolutely have to. I don’t know what he’s doing or where he is. That’s what you wanted, right?”

“I’m less concerned about your physical activities,” Peter says, tossing the stress ball gently at Martin’s chest, “and more about your feelings.”

Martin feels his face soften. He looks down. “You know that’s going to take longer than anything else.”

“I don’t mean to imply you’re not working _hard,_ ” Peter says, with genuine feeling. He reaches out and tips Martin’s chin up with one curled finger, and Martin finds himself looking straight into his Arctic-blue eyes. “Emotion is the hardest thing to conquer. It’s _very_ hard to let people go.”

 _I don’t intend to,_ Martin thinks. He is glad Peter has none of Elias’ knowing. “I’m trying,” he lies.

“I _know_ you are. And I’m very proud of your efforts.” Peter chucks him under the chin and then leans back, palming the stress ball, looking at him with the fondness one might reserve for their prize dog. “And you know, Martin, if you need anything from me—guidance—you only have to ask for it.” He smiles, those blue eyes crinkling at the corners. “I _like_ you, Martin.”

Martin looks back down at Peter’s hands. They’re big, like the rest of him. Knuckles covered in wiry white hair. If they have a temperature, Martin knows, it’s a perfect neutral—he’s felt them often enough on his shoulders.

“It’s like withdrawal,” he says slowly.

“What is?”

“Isolating.”

“How so?” Peter covers one hand with the other, rests them on his thigh.

Martin swallows. “You know. When you’re coming off a medicine, they have to taper you. A little less this week. Even less the next. Until you’re off it, and you feel okay.”

“If you’re asking me to let you go down to the Archives and talk—”

“No,” Martin says, though his heart skips a beat at the idea—of seeing Melanie or Daisy or anyone from what seems like a lifetime ago. “Not that. It’s just—” He shifts uneasily in his chair. Never been good at this part of things. “Human connection. You know? Little human things. Small talk. Group chats. Sex.”

Peter looks at him for a while, until he starts to fidget a little under his gaze. But he looks back.

* * *

  1. Describe a scent you remember fondly, but no longer experience.



He hadn’t understood, at first, why Peter wanted Elias’ desk cleared off. It had seemed like busy work, a request over email. Sighing, Martin had pulled the spare keys from his bottom drawer and headed out and down the hall, toward the imposing oak doors.

 _A scent you remember fondly._ He thinks about it in the shower, in the dark. Hand idling at the crease of his hip and thigh, the flesh there still warm and flushed. There’s still a little wobble in his knees, a little tugging tension inside him, though he’s been home for an hour.

It had become pretty clear why Peter wanted the desk cleared off as soon as he appeared, materializing in his cloud of irritating static, looking pleased and expectant. Martin had looked at him, at the desk, at the closed door, locked out of instinct. “Oh,” he had said. “Well.”

Maybe he’ll leave that item on the Assessment for tomorrow. When his head is clearer and he’s had some sleep. He’s not going to be able to think of anything else tonight besides the hard surface of Elias’ desk pressing uncomfortably into the points of his shoulder-blades, or Peter’s soft, hot breath between his thighs—

He swallows. Palms roughly once between his legs just to quell the building ache a little. Shuts off the shower and steps out.

He doubts that sex is something Peter had had in mind over the phone that day in Jon’s hospital room. He’d asked, afterward, while Peter was gently, absent-mindedly wiping down the insides of Martin’s slick thighs with a monogrammed handkerchief, if this was part of the process. “It very well might be,” Peter had said, sounding airy and far away, as usual. “It’s different for everyone, of course. On the other hand, maybe we’re just having a bit of fun. Does it matter either way?”

Does it? Hell if Martin knows. He sits down at the kitchen table, where the Self-Assessment has been sitting unfolded and half-filled in for weeks. Peter keeps faxing him new ones. He’ll have to be patient. He’s careful not to press his legs together, conscious of the tenuous heat still humming there. (He can’t remember the last person who made him come like that.)

After thirty minutes he makes up something about the smell of baking bread and writes it down. It’s pathetic enough. Maybe Peter will take it at face value. He goes to bed, his head full of the smell of salt air.

* * *

  1. Describe an emotion you remember with fondness, but no longer experience.



He’s never been very good at being a bad person. Not that he hasn’t tried. As a kid he had attempted more than once to infiltrate the affections and friendships of the girls who put gum in his hair and called him ugly names in hopes that by joining them, he wouldn’t need to beat them. He had tried picking fights with bigger boys only to stagger home with scraped knees and punch-swollen jaws. None of those attempts had lasted long. He’s just never gotten the hang of being cruel. Even in those first few months under Jon’s employ he had struggled even _hearing_ about some of those statements—the horrible things people could and did do to one another. Not me, he’d thought. To an extent that’s still true. But he’s finding out more often now what he’s capable of. The guilt is gone, is all—he has been waiting for it to rise up and curdle his plans, but it just hasn’t.

He likes Peter. Poor Peter—always with a smile and a word so over-the-top sinister that it borders on the laughable. Peter, by all accounts, just trying to save the world, again. He’s being cruel to Peter, he knows. Not in a grandiose way—nothing on the scale of Elias, or even Gertrude. A quieter, interpersonal cruelty, because Peter likes him too. He likes Martin a _lot._

He knows the broad strokes of the game, what is expected of him, and the uncertainty of the time between now and then. Martin isn’t necessarily a step ahead of him, but he is, he modestly reckons, at least walking in line with him now. It’s nice to have an equal, even if he’s going to let that equal down, sooner, later, sometime. He might fail doing it, of course. There’s every chance he’ll wind up exactly as Lonely as Peter wants him. But it’s the intent of the thing.

Poor Peter. In another life, he thinks, they might have really hit it off. Someday, when he isn’t Lonely anymore, he’ll feel terrible about it.

* * *

  1. Do you understand the necessity of loneliness to your current job description?



“I’ve very much been looking forward to one of these,” Peter says gleefully, settling into the armchair in Martin’s office in his usual position—ankle over knee. He has the finished Self-Assessment open in his hands, and Martin watches with despairing fondness while he fishes out a pair of reading glasses from his coat pocket and unfolds them. He clears his throat, as if he’s going to read aloud, but he doesn’t. Behind his desk, Martin swivels slightly to and fro in his chair, watching Peter’s white brows furrow in concentration—come apart, rise up—his eyes scanning Martin’s handwriting slowly and deliberately.

“So,” Martin says, once Peter has finished, and folded up his reading glasses again.

Peter exhales thoughtfully, spreading out the page across his knee. He sinks his chin into his hand.

“I’m pleased with your progress,” he says, sounding almost surprised. “Very—interesting answers, Martin, very—thoughtful. Hm.”

“On the right track, then.”

“Very much so. Always room for improvement, of course.” He folds the Assessment back up again into halves. He casts Martin a smile. “But I’m very proud of you. Are you proud?”

Martin shrugs. “Seems counterproductive to be proud of anything.”

“Well, I am extremely pleased. I think we make an excellent team, don’t you?” Peter uncrosses his legs and gets to his feet with a little huff of effort, tugging his Aran Island sweater down over his belly, patting his coat pockets. Perfunctorily, like a doting uncle, he leans across Martin’s desk to press a dry, fond kiss to his forehead, and then leans back on his heels again. “I think we’re going to do wonderful things together.”

“If you say so,” Martin says. He feels a hot little curl of something at the base of his spine. “Peter?”

Peter, who had already begun to turn toward the door, pauses, turns back. “Yes.”

Martin swallows. “You told me that at the end of this I won’t want to talk to anyone about it. Not even Jon.”

Peter inclines his head. “Yes.”

“I—I’ve sort of inferred there’s no coming back from what we’re doing. Am I right?”

“That’s a conversation for a little later, Martin.” He looks uncomfortable. Martin can’t remember ever seeing him uncomfortable before.

Martin smiles a little, a soft quirk of one corner of his mouth.

“Won’t you miss me?” he says, trying for levity. “Your favorite employee?”

Peter smiles back, but it’s a distant look, as if something else is smiling for him. “Well, of course I will,” he says, his usual cheer artificial. Martin can hear it from a mile away. “But such is the way of the Lonely, Martin.”

Or, _You’ll be doing me a favor_. It’s not a surprise.

“Right,” Martin says. “Necessary evils, all that.”

The squealing static of Peter’s departure is quieter than usual. Restrained. When he’s gone, the office is empty, and Martin is left alone, with the folded Self-Assessment sitting on the edge of his desk.

He picks it up, swivels in his chair, and feeds it into the shredder. He watches the little worms of white paper grinding out the other end. Turns, pulls another one from the stack, and spreads it out smooth and flat in front of him.

_Broadly, how functionally isolated are you in your current situation?_

The conscious loss of a companion is a lonely thing. He wonders how much currency a betrayal holds.

Poor Peter. He picks up a pen and writes a new lie.


End file.
